updated 09:40 am EST, Mon February 6, 2012

Strict DRM measures block access

Beginning February 7th, several Mac and Windows games will be become temporarily unplayable, publisher Ubisoft has announced. These include Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes VI, and The Settlers 7 for Windows, and the Mac ports of Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and The Settlers. The company is moving servers out of a third-party data center into a new building, and promises that the end result will "improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers."

There is no word on when the transition will be finished. The impacted games will be unavailable because of a strict DRM system sometimes imposed by Ubisoft, requiring even titles like Assassin's Creed to have constant Internet access, despite it having no multiplayer mode. The company has since relented on DRM to a limited extent, following public backlash.

PC games based on Ubisoft's Uplay network, for instance, should remain playable during the server move, so long as they have already connected to the service at least once. Uplay itself will be down during the transition.

Bad DRM, Bad!

And this is why DRM is bad. If you're not playing a network game, why should a loss of network connectivity stop you from playing games that you purchased? Because some corporate drone wants to stick it to the pirates? Pirates get around DRM and only law abiding consumers get the shaft. :(